It was back in July when we first heard about 21 year-old George Woods (Richardson’s Trek Racing Team) ‘doing the business’ in Belgium, we ‘had a word’ with him but with all that Tour carry-on we didn’t get round to writing the interview up. Then the other week we saw he was in the frame again, winning a 114 kilometre kermis at Deinze. High times we gave ourselves a shake and got the piece published!
VeloVeritas has spoken to Michael Broadwith in the past, when he won the national 24 hour championship in 2015 with a monstrous 537 miles. This time the distance was even more extreme: 844 miles, the distance between Lands End and John O’Groats, which he covered at an average speed of 19.438 mph. I try to be sparing with the superlatives but that is truly an amazing performance. Michael kindly gave of his time to us just a few days after his gargantuan ride.
Has a Scottish based woman ever won the British 100 mile time trial title championship before? The answer is ‘yes,’ in 1998; Andrea Pogson riding for Midlothian Racing Team did that very thing and kindly consented to delve back into her memory banks and give us her recollections of a highly successful time trialling career.
It's our last stage today, it's Friday morning and we're in Tivoli, headed for Spoleto. Yesterday was an up and down sort of day, although by the sixth grappa last night it seemed fine. We left our hotel (as featured in George A Romero's movie - Zombies, Dawn of the Dead) and headed for the stage start at Teano, we would never have found it if we hadn't tagged-on to the Mavic neutral service cars.
Them sprinters are big guys-I passed them in the tunnel tonight, they looked cool, cocky, stylish. The public here love the sprinters; at intro time, they actually get their big build up from Daniel Mangeas after the Six Day riders. Bauge did a standstill for more than half-an-hour, in Gent there would be bricks getting lobbed at him, but in Grenoble-they love it.
Sean Kelly was the ‘King of the Classics’ for many years but the man from Carrick-on-Suir also won the Vuelta a España and many shorter stage races. His record at Liège-Bastogne-Liège is only beaten by Argentin and Merckx. We spoke with the Irishman for his thoughts on the ‘Old Lady’ of the road.